Ranthambore and Nagarhole Tiger Safari

Because most overseas arrivals into Delhi land late at night, day one is kept gentle on purpose. Someone from our office will be standing at the Indira Gandhi International Airport exit with your name, ready to load bags into the car; outside peak traffic, the hotel is about forty minutes away. Rooms are usually released around 2 or 3 pm; if you arrive before sunrise we suggest booking the previous night as well, letting you go straight to bed. Over a cup of tea, our representative runs through the safari plan, permits and packing.

Once rested, you set out with a city guide for Humayun's Tomb, a red sandstone and marble mausoleum raised for the second Mughal emperor in the 1560s, whose double dome and garden plan the builders of the Taj Mahal later refined. Water channels split its walled garden into four equal squares in the Persian style, and parakeets, hoopoes and the odd shikra hawk move through the trees. It is a good spot to test binoculars and camera settings before the wildlife days begin. The site is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the late light on the dome is worth waiting for.

From there a short drive leads to Lodhi Garden, a green city park scattered with domed tombs of 15th-century sultans, shared by joggers, yoga groups and families. Birders know it well for spotted owlets roosting in old trees, purple sunbirds and the grey hornbill, an easy first lesson in Indian species. Your guide also points out the difference between the black kites wheeling overhead and the larger Egyptian vultures sometimes seen near the city. For dinner, try a nearby Punjabi kitchen known for North Indian dishes such as dal makhani and tandoori breads. Overnight in Delhi.

Straight after breakfast the car joins the expressway heading south-west toward Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan. Traffic leaving Delhi can be slow, so an early start helps, and a midway break at a highway dhaba gives time for chai and samosas. The landscape changes steadily on the way, from the farmland of Haryana to the low, rocky Aravalli hills, with camel carts, mustard fields in winter and roadside stalls selling clay pots. By early afternoon you are checking in to a heritage property, often a converted haveli once owned by of nobles who served the Kachhwaha rulers.

Toward sunset a guided stroll covers the old walled city, painted a terracotta pink for the visit of the Prince of Wales in 1876 and kept that color by law ever since. You stop in front of the Hawa Mahal, a five-story screen of latticed windows from which palace ladies once followed festivals in the street below. The bazaars around it are divided by trade, with one lane for bangles, another for textiles and another for brass and silver, and your guide can help you bargain fairly if you wish to shop.

As the sun goes down, the city's pigeons settle on rooftops and the call to prayer mixes with temple bells and traffic. Supper is a good chance to order a Rajasthani platter featuring dal baati churma, gatte ki sabzi and ker sangri, a dish of desert beans and berries that shows how local cooks learned to use dry-land plants. Our team confirms tomorrow's early pickup for the Jhalana leopard safari, which starts close to sunrise. Lay out warm clothing in winter, because open jeeps feel cold in the first hour. Overnight in Jaipur.

Before breakfast you drive a short way to Jhalana Leopard Reserve, a patch of dry thorn forest and rocky hills surrounded almost entirely by the city. It holds a healthy population of leopards, and in good season they are seen fairly often resting on rocks or crossing tracks at first light, although no sighting can be promised. Each drive lasts roughly two and a half hours in an open gypsy driven by forest staff. Even if the leopards stay hidden, you may see nilgai, jackals, striped hyena signs and birds such as the Indian peafowl and the grey francolin calling from the scrub.

After breakfast at your hotel you head north to Amber Fort, the hilltop palace of the Kachhwaha kings before Jaipur was founded in 1727. We do not offer the elephant ride up to the gate; instead you walk the ramp or take a jeep, which is easier on you and on the animals. Within the walls you pass through the Diwan-i-Aam, the mirrored Sheesh Mahal and the zenana quarters, where screened corridors link the queens' apartments. The fort is part of the UNESCO-listed Hill Forts of Rajasthan, the same group that includes Ranthambore Fort, which you will see in a few days.

Later, back inside the walled city, you see the City Palace, in which descendants of the royal line still occupy one wing, and beside it Jantar Mantar, the astronomer-king Jai Singh II's open-air yard of masonry sightlines and dials. Stand beside the giant Samrat Yantra and you can watch its shadow creep across the marble scale, while the guide describes how court astronomers worked out eclipse dates and planetary positions with these instruments almost three hundred years ago. The evening is free to rest, shop for block-printed cotton or try a lassi from one of the old shops near the bazaar. Overnight in Jaipur.

After an early breakfast you leave Jaipur for Sawai Madhopur, the town at the edge of Ranthambore National Park. Beyond the city, the road crosses flat farmland, wheat and mustard in winter, dotted with village wells and acacia trees, and the hills rise suddenly as you approach the park. Check-in is at a forest-edge resort a few minutes from the gates, with breakfast, lunch and dinner covered. Lunch is served early so that you are ready for the first afternoon drive. Lodges here often have open lawns where peacocks and treepies wander, and some keep a small library on Rajasthan's wildlife for guests to borrow.

Ranthambore was once the hunting ground of the Maharajas of Jaipur and became a tiger reserve under Project Tiger in 1973. Each permit is tied to one numbered sector, assigned by the forest department at booking, and the route cannot be changed once you are at the gate. Safaris run in six-seater gypsies or twenty-seater canters, both open-topped. We book gypsies wherever permits allow, since they are quieter and more flexible, but availability is limited, so we confirm your vehicle type as early as possible, usually when the online booking window opens months ahead.

Your first afternoon drive introduces the landscape that makes this park so photogenic: dhok trees with pale bark, rocky ridges, ruined chhatris and banyan trees with roots that hang like curtains. Sambar and spotted deer feed along the tracks, and you may hear the sharp alarm call of a langur from a tree, a signal your naturalist takes seriously. Tigers here have become relatively used to vehicles, and in good season they are often seen near water in the late afternoon. Remember to dress in earth tones, keep voices low and never ask the driver to leave the track. Overnight in Ranthambore.

Day five's dawn drive leaves the resort in darkness, with blankets on the seats in winter and a flask of tea for the first stop. Zones that include the three central lakes, Padam Talao, Rajbagh Talao and Malik Talao, are among the most prized, because tigers often hunt sambar in the shallows here and rest in the shade of ruined pavilions on the banks. On the edge of Padam Talao stands the Jogi Mahal, a former royal hunting lodge near one of the largest banyan trees in India. The lakes fall inside only some zones and the allotment is out of our hands, yet tigers hold territory across all of them.

Late breakfast at the resort opens a long free stretch until the afternoon drive. Use it to charge batteries, edit images or sit by the pool, because the open landscape of Ranthambore gets very hot from March onward. Photographers should bring a zoom in the 100 to 400 mm range; the park is open enough that very long lenses are not always needed, and wide shots of a tiger against fort walls are often the best images of the trip. Your naturalist can also show you how to tell individual tigers apart by the stripe patterns on their faces, which researchers use to track each animal.

Another permit, another sector: the late-day drive enters a new zone, ideally one that includes rocky valleys or the edges of the lakes. Watch for marsh crocodiles hauled out on the banks, painted storks and black-necked storks in the shallows and Indian stone curlews hiding in plain sight on the dry ground. Leopards and sloth bears also live in Ranthambore, though they tend to keep to the rugged outer areas away from the tigers. Striped hyenas and jungle cats are sometimes seen near dusk as the vehicle heads back to the gate. Dinner is at the resort, often around a fire in winter. Overnight in Ranthambore.

Today's dawn drive is your fourth in the park, and by now you will notice how each zone feels different, from narrow gorges to open grassland. Once a tiger is on your list, the naturalist can switch focus to birds such as the crested serpent eagle, the Indian scops owl roosting by day or the Indian pitta that arrives with the summer heat. Sightings are always a matter of luck, and many guests find that the slow moments, watching deer at a waterhole or listening to the forest wake up, stay with them as long as the cats do.

A short drive after breakfast brings you up to Ranthambore Fort, which stands on a hill inside the national park and can be visited without a safari permit. Built around the 10th century and fought over by Delhi sultans and Rajput rulers, it was the scene of a famous siege in 1301. A climb through several gateways brings you to temples, step-wells, ruined palaces and the much-visited Trinetra Ganesh Temple, where devotees send wedding invitations to the deity. From the walls you look straight down into the forest, and langurs and sometimes even tigers have been seen near the lower slopes.

In the afternoon you can visit a craft cooperative in Sawai Madhopur set up to give income to women from villages around the park, where they make quilts, embroidery and block prints with wildlife designs. Your guide explains how conservation groups have worked with local families since the 1980s to reduce the pressure on the forest from grazing and wood collection. Back at the resort there is a final safari in the late afternoon if you prefer it to the village visit; let us know in advance so we can apply for the permit. Overnight in Ranthambore.

Checkout follows breakfast, and the road back to Jaipur International Airport is planned to fit the southbound flight. Nonstop services to Bangalore run on most days in under three hours; on other days we route you through Delhi or Mumbai. Economy tickets and standard baggage are included; keep lenses, batteries and memory cards in your cabin bag. Your driver from Rajasthan says goodbye at the terminal, and our Karnataka team takes over at the other end.

You land at Kempegowda International Airport in the afternoon or evening and transfer to a hotel on the north side of Bangalore, close to the road you will take tomorrow. After four days of dry, dusty Rajasthan, the air feels softer and greener here on the Deccan plateau. Your evening meal might feature appam, ghee roast and filter coffee, an easy introduction to southern food. Pack a light rain jacket in your day bag, as afternoon showers are common in the southern forests. Overnight in Bangalore.

Leaving early, you beat the worst of the city traffic and head south past Mysore toward the Kabini side of Nagarhole. The last hour runs through quiet villages where farmers grow ragi, sugarcane and turmeric right up to the forest edge, and elephant-proof trenches show how closely people and wildlife live here. You arrive in time for lunch at a jungle lodge on the reservoir, where all meals are included. The view from the lodge alone shows the change from Rajasthan: water everywhere, tall trees, and a low mist on the far bank in the early morning.

Nagarhole Tiger Reserve, also called Rajiv Gandhi National Park, forms part of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, one of the largest connected forest landscapes in South Asia. Its southern edge meets the Kabini reservoir, and across the water lies Bandipur, so animals move freely between the two parks. Around four o'clock you board a forest department boat that hugs the shoreline, timed for when elephant families leave the trees to drink. From around March to June, when the water level falls, the grass on the exposed banks can draw dozens of elephants in the same stretch.

From the boat, look for darters with their snake-like necks, ospreys in winter, and the river lapwing calling from sandbars. Mugger crocodiles slide quietly into the water as you pass, and a family of smooth-coated otters may pop up to watch you. Distance is kept from elephants with calves and from any tiger or leopard seen on the bank, which does happen from time to time. Life jackets must be worn throughout. Back at the lodge, the naturalist gives a short talk on the reserve over tea. Overnight in Kabini.

Karnataka's Forest Department controls every Nagarhole drive, deciding how many vehicles go out and when. In recent seasons the state has tightened rules after conflict between tigers and villagers on the reserve fringe, and vehicles may be jeeps, canters or forest department buses depending on what is running when you visit. Permits are limited, and we book every slot that is available for your dates. The morning drive starts soon after sunrise, entering forest that is very different from Ranthambore, with tall teak, Indian rosewood and bamboo forming a closed canopy.

That thicker cover makes tigers harder to spot than on the open hillsides of Rajasthan, but Nagarhole has strong numbers of big cats and one of the best leopard populations in India. Dholes, the Asiatic wild dogs, are seen regularly, often trotting along the track in groups, and the reserve has large herds of gaur, the world's biggest wild cattle. Your naturalist explains how the elephant population shapes the forest by opening up paths and spreading seeds. A sighting of a tiger or leopard is possible on any drive, though no one can say when.

Following lunch and a siesta, your second outing departs at the time allotted by the forest department. It often passes waterholes where sambar and spotted deer gather before dark and where tigers sometimes come to drink. Watch the treetops for the Malabar giant squirrel and the Malabar pied hornbill, both southern species you will not have seen in Rajasthan. Back at the lodge, many guests compare their photographs from the two parks and notice how much greener and softer the light is here. Dinner is served on the deck or by the water. Overnight in Kabini.

One more dawn outing remains, a final chance for the big cats, but also a good moment to focus on the smaller life of the forest. In Nagarhole you can find the brown fish owl roosting near streams, a giant flying squirrel curled up in a hollow trunk and long-tailed flycatchers flashing white or rufous through the shade. Your naturalist may also point out the scent marks and scrapes tigers leave on the forest road. If you have not had a clear tiger sighting yet, stay patient; many guests see their best cat on the last drive of a trip.

Late morning brings a guided nature walk in the lodge grounds or a permitted area outside the reserve, where walking is allowed with a trained guide. Walks inside the national park itself are not permitted. You will look for butterflies, orb-weaver spiders, skinks and lizards, and learn about the plants that local Jenu Kuruba and Betta Kuruba communities have used for food and medicine for generations. It is a quieter, more detailed side of the forest that jeep drives rarely show, and a pleasant change after so many early starts.

The afternoon is free. You can book an extra safari or boat outing if seats are still open, at additional cost, or rest on the riverbank with binoculars as elephants feed across the water. Dusk on the Kabini rounds off the safari days well, with the forest turning gold and the first nightjars calling from the riverbank scrub. At dinner your naturalist helps you complete a written sightings list covering mammals, birds and reptiles from both parks, a souvenir that shows how different the tiger forests of northern and southern India are. Overnight in Kabini.

Following breakfast, the car leaves Kabini for Kempegowda International Airport, on the far side of Bangalore. The drive takes most of the day with traffic, so this plan suits the late-evening and night flights that most long-haul carriers use from Bangalore. For a daytime departure, add one more Bangalore night, which we can quote separately. On the way, your driver can stop for lunch near Mysore or Mandya and for a last cup of South Indian filter coffee.

In eleven days you have watched tigers among the lakes and ruins of Ranthambore, looked for leopards in Jaipur's own backyard and followed elephants along the Kabini shore, a north and south pairing that few tiger trips attempt. If you would like to see central India's forests next, Kanha, Bandhavgarh or Tadoba make a strong follow-up, and our team can plan it with you. We see you to the terminal doors and wish you a safe flight home.